Drug Use and the Rights of the Person Criminalization Itself

Drug Use and the Rights of the Person criminalization itself. Criminalization imposes a crime tariff’ on drugs, inflating prices and creating high profit margins that make the drug trade attractive to David A. J. Richards organized crime. The organized crime argument begs the question, since it is criminalization, not drug use itself, that makes possible organized crime A drug may be broadly defined as “any chemical agent that affects living involvement. processes” that may be ingested through the mouth, the rectum, by injection, or by Second, to the extent that drug use is related to increases in other criminal inhalation. Importantly, this standard definition is pharmacological: a substance is activity, or diversion of criminal activity into certain forms, that causal matrix defined as a drug by its mechanism of chemical agency. Two significant conclusions depends on criminalization, not on drug use itself. In order to pay the crime tariff on follow. First, according to this definition, alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine are drugs, drugs, users may engage in burglary, theft, or robbery, or in services with their own however ingested and in whatever circumstances, for they are chemical agents within crime tariffs, such as prostitution, gambling, and drug trafficking itself, In addition, its terms. The reluctance of social convention to regard these agents as drugs requires the criminal stigma and enforced covertness probably encourage, or at least reinforce, explanation and investigation. The popular definition of drugs certainly cannot be dependence on narcotics, and certainly make detection and possible control of accepted uncritically without begging a most important moral question. addiction more difficult. Where heroin is made available to addicts in regulated Second, the scientific definition implies nothing about the purposes of drug use, contexts at low or minimal prices, as it is in Britain, no causal nexus with ancillary which include therapeutic cure, relief of symptoms, pain, or anxiety, regulations of crime exists, and the level of drug addiction appears under control. In the United mood (by way either of depressants or stimulants), stimulation and exploration of States, prior to the Harrison Act, there was no link between drug use and ancillary religious experience, release of hallucinatory fantasy for a range of purposes, and crime. Indeed, the composition of the drug-using population in the United States has recreational pleasure. A political or moral analysis of drug use must go beyond the probably been decisively shaped by criminalization. The population of heroin addicts pharmacological focus on the chemical agency common to all drugs and assess the which before criminalization included many middle-class women, now includes a propriety of various purposes of drug use. disproportionate number of poor urban minorities. The moral implications of this Contemporary drugs may be classified as: the narcotics (opium, morphine, heroin, shift, for which criminalization bears some responsibility, are themselves an methadone, and others), caffeine, nicotine, and depressants (alcohol, barbiturates, appropriate subject for further analysis. tranquilizers, and other sedatives and hypnotics), the stimulants (including coca Third, at least with respect to most drugs now criminalized, there is simply no leaves, cocaine, and amphetamines), and the hallucinogens or phantasticants factual support for the argument that drug use itself releases inhibitions or criminal (mescaline, LSD, LSD-like drugs, marijuana, and hashish). In order to understand tendencies. To the contrary, heroin and marijuana appear to diminish the the American practice of criminal prohibition of certain forms of drug use, we must aggressiveness which often expresses itself in violent crime. No chapter of the take seriously the arguments offered in its defense: (1) criminogenesis; (2) the history of American attitudes to drug use is more instructive than the dependence of control of ancillary forms of physical illness and injury; (3) the intrinsically immoral advocates of criminalization on this argument. Often this argument was supported by and degrading nature of drug use, either in and of itself or in its effects on other selective citations from unreliable journalistic or law enforcement reports, individuals and society in general; and (4) cognate to (3), the self-destructive or self-serving confessions by criminals that their conduct was induced by drugs, or debilitating nature of drug use. Of these arguments, the first and second do not unsubstantiated surmises of enforcement officials wholly lacking any critical justify the current absolute criminal prohibitions of many forms of of drug use; impartiality on the question. therefore, the gravamen of the argument for criminalization turns, as we shall see, on This hystericalized social mythology may unwittingly aggravate the problem of the proper weight to be given to the third and fourth argument. violent crime that it obstensibly seeks to reduce. In deterring the use of the drugs that lessen violent propensities, criminalization may encourage the use of alcohol, which Criminogenesis demonstrably heightens such violent tendencies. In addition, upon discovering that Criminal prohibition of the use of certain drugs, notably heroin and marijuana, certain illegal drugs do not cause violent crime, persons who use these drugs may fail has been justified as a means of suppressing other types of crime. It is said that drug to regulate appropriately their use in certain contexts – for example, prior to driving. users support their habits by theft and robbery; that drug use releases violence, This discovery may also lead them to conclude that all distinctions between legal and induces illegal trafficking in drugs, and enlarges the scope of organized crime illegal drugs are irrational and hypocritical, and may thereby encourage them to use operations. None of these considerations in fact justifies the criminalization of drug other illegal drugs which might, in fact, stimulate illegal violence. Wholesale use; indeed, criminalization itself fosters these evils. It forces drug users into illegal criminalization, in contrast to fine-tuned regulation of drug dosages and uses, conduct to obtain money for drugs and brings them into contact with the criminal apparently creates or compounds the problem it is supposed to solve. underground, the covertness of which breeds Arguments of criminogenesis are generally circular and question-begging; they First, the association of drug use with illegal trafficking in drugs and the argue for criminalization of drug use on the basis of the evils that criminalization, not consequent enlarged scope of organized crime operations is a result of drug use fosters. If there are crimes associated with drug use, they are more rationally attacked by decriminalization and by criminal statutes directed narrowly at in the competent exercise of certain personal abilities and that the behavior in the evils themselves (for example, drug use before driving), not by overbroad question fails to be competent in the required way. The degraded one thus is the statutes that actually encourage what they purport to combat. natural object of shame or self-disgust at his personal failure to live up to standards of conduct that are valued as essential to the integrity of the self. Accordingly, the Control of Physical Injury and Other Harms application of the notion of degradation to drug use requires an analysis of the valued Another argument supporting criminalization is that drug use may cause physical behavior from which such use is alleged to deviate. This behavior apparently injury and even death. The image usually invoked is that of the contemporary, embodies certain general conceptions of self-control and also includes specific urban, ghetto heroin addict, whose addiction may be accompanied by hepatitis, perfectionist ideals of such conceptions as well as notions of moral personality which tetanus, and abscesses at the site of injection. His practice of sharing needles may drug use, especially drug addiction, alienates or enslaves in some fundamentally result in the communication of disease – for example, malaria. His addiction may immoral way. Although these conceptions are interrelated, we may profitably discuss also conceal the early symptoms of diseases, such as pneumonia, or lead to them separately. malnutrition, which increases susceptibility to disease. The varying strengths of 1. General Conceptions of Self-Control doses may also increase the possibility of an overdose and sometimes death. One general conception of the person, which may underlie the claim that drug This scenario fails to recognize that any drug that is used in sufficiently high use is degrading, is the value of self-control. dosages or in certain contexts (with other drugs, for example) will probably cause Drug use does not produce a drunken anarchy inconsistent with the aims of severe harm, including, sometimes, death. This is true of many drugs currently rational will as such. Humans use drugs for diverse purposes – for therapeutic care available without prescription. Harm usually occurs when, intentionally or not, the and cure, for relief of pain or anxiety, for stimulation or depression of moods, for instructions for proper use are not observed. In general, the composition and purity exploration of imaginative experience (for creative, aesthetic, religious, therapeutic, of legal drugs are carefully regulated, and the potential

Load more